


there's no rehearsing

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cooking, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, No Angst, Nobody is Dead, SO MUCH FLUFF, all fluff, borscht, our dreamboys being happy and ALIVE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 01:46:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17112119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: “Is that—“ he pauses, because it can’t be, even as he rounds the corner and comes into the kitchen and sees that yeah, maybe itcanbe. “Borscht?” Itlookslike borscht. Kind of.“What the fuck else would it be?” K all but snaps back, shoulders hunched. His fingertips are stained green where he’s clutching their stainless steel ladle like he used to clutch a broken beer bottle; Proko wants to suck those fingers into his mouth and let them bump up against his fuckinguvula,tasting salty andalive.(AKA, Proko and K are alive and domestic boyfriends in love. Fight me.)





	there's no rehearsing

**Author's Note:**

> happy dreamboys in love? happy dreamboys in love.

He comes home to the smell of food. 

This in and of itself is not out of the ordinary; Proko works from 9 to 5, and by the time he gets home sometimes K is just getting up, or sometimes he’s been up for hours. It depends on the day, and the night before, and the volunteer schedule at the shelter and K’s shifts at the flower shop down the road. Sometimes he gets home before K, on the sparse days that K works. Sometimes he gets home in time to shower off the grime from a hard day’s work and is starting dinner when K rolls in the door smelling  _ green,  _ with chlorophyll staining his fingers and a bouquet of nearly-dead flowers in his hands, rescued from the bin. 

Usually when Proko gets home and smells food it’s because K’s ordered in, Thai or Chinese or Sylvester’s Pizza down the block. 

“Hey, fucker,” K calls out in hello when he hears the door close, and Proko furrows his brow, trying to tell what the fuck he’s smelling. Not Thai or Chinese or Sylvester’s Pizza. 

It’s familiar— sharply so. 

“Did a new restaurant open up on the block?” He shouts back, baffled, even as he ducks into the half bath off the entryway to scrub his hands clean with the clump of homemade soap resting in the wine bottle soap dish that K had learnt to make at the craft night their downstairs neighbor Karen had run at the community center last August. The soap was black and smelt like charcoal and roses; it reminded him doubly of K. K as a teenager, puking black in the Henrietta ER half a dozen times before graduation, and K as an adult, coming home smelling of freshly cut flowers with a looseness in his face that had never been present before. 

“No, what the fuck?” K answers, and Proko squints at his own reflection, using the little scrub brush to clean under his nails.  _ What the fuck,  _ Proko mouths at himself, and bares his teeth reflexively at the mirror, defiant and twenty-four.  _ Fuckin’ made it,  _ he mouths, another reflex— K’s brief foray into psychology classes at the community college had led to a brief love affair with  _ affirmation statements.  _ As it turned out, giving your inner infant all the psyching up it craved was just as addictive as cocaine. 

“Is that—“ he pauses, because it can’t be, even as he rounds the corner and comes into the kitchen and sees that yeah, maybe it  _ can  _ be. “Borscht?” It  _ looks  _ like borscht. Kind of. 

“What the fuck else would it be?” K all but snaps back, shoulders hunched. His fingertips are stained green where he’s clutching their stainless steel ladle like he used to clutch a broken beer bottle; Proko wants to suck those fingers into his mouth and let them bump up against his fucking  _ uvula,  _ tasting salty and  _ alive _ . 

“I don’t know, some Hannibal shit? Sweeney Todd?” K squints, and tosses his head. Proko would never in a million years admit it out loud, but K looks just like Mrs. Kavinsky when he does that. It’s the kind of movement that comes natural to Slavic women, even when they’re on enough tranquilizers to take down a fucking racehorse. 

“It’s fucking borscht, motherfucker. You don’t have to fucking eat it, I’ll eat that shit  _ myself—“ _ K is working himself up into a froth, scowling like he’s— like he’s  _ embarrassed,  _ and Proko is so fucking in love that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

“Hey, hey, baby,” he soothes, stepping in close to K’s space.  _ “Dreamboy,”  _ he all but coos, breath hot and fanning over K’s face, stale coffee and peppermints and  _ Proko,  _ and K moans a little, throaty and  _ wanting,  _ and it’s been days since they’ve fucked, Proko realizes all of a sudden.  _ Days.  _ They’re getting old. 

“That’s you,” K retorts softly, and Proko laughs a little, huffy and hot and  _ amused.  _ His chest feels full with it. 

“Sometimes I think  _ I _ dreamt  _ you,”  _ he confesses, and touches the ever-present chain around his neck, the one K’d dragged out of his own mind when he’d been skinny and alone and young. When there was nothing but  _ waiting,  _ waiting for life to start. Waiting not to hide anymore. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to be  _ Joseph Kavinsky.  _

K lists into him, and for a long moment Proko’s sure they’re gonna abandon the borscht and fuck right there on the tile floor while it boils over, forgotten and unimportant in comparison to the tar gumming up their stomachs, lust and need and  _ want  _ all rolled up and tangled together. 

_ Just us,  _ Proko imagines saying into K’s ear while he gives it to him  _ so good.  _ Imagines pressing his mouth to the thin inner skin of K’s wrists, following the path he’s taken a million times before to K’s inner elbow, pale and fleshy, his bicep, lean and hard, until he can nose in at K’s chest, his peony-pink nipples and his thundering heartbeat. 

They don’t abandon the borscht and fuck on the kitchen floor, because Proko’s phone takes that opportunity to ring and it snaps K out of his haze. He smacks at Proko with the ladle and orders him from the kitchen with a cacophony of profanity. 

“Sit your ass at the fucking table or I’ll belt you so hard you won’t sit for a week!” K barks, and Skov, on the phone, cackles in Proko’s ear, shrill as a cartoon witch. Proko winces and thinks again how glad he is that the Pack went their separate ways after graduation before they annoyed each other so badly that the only recourse was violent and bloody quadruple homicide, a battle royale with only one of them left standing. Probably Jiang. It was always the quiet motherfuckers.

He tucks himself into the kotatsu and waits, warming his feet idly and leaning back on his hands, triceps flexing. 

The borscht isn’t terrible. 

It’s kind of salty, and Proko thinks that probably K didn’t pat down the beef before he put it into the pot, but it’s not  _ awful.  _ The beets taste fresh and  _ magenta,  _ and the beef is not too rubbery. It’s _ okay,  _ but K making it himself makes it the very best thing he’s ever fucking had in his life. There’s a reason Proko’s put so many nails in the walls to hang up the fruits of K’s various arts and crafts classes and it’s not because he’s got a fetish for mediocre sceneries in acrylic paint or vaguely-problematic ‘tribal’ masks.  

“Hey,” he says when his spoon rattles against the bottom of the bowl, practically scraped clean. K’s eyes alight on his, silently asking  _ what?  _ Silently wishing. Waiting, mistrustful even after all this time, a stray dog to his bones. “This was great. Thank you.” He says sincerely, and K blinks once, smiles back, breaking open like a cracked egg that somehow contains not a yolk but a whole fucking  _ sunset.  _ Staggering.

“Yeah, yeah,” K mumbles, and ducks his head. “You’re doing the fuckin’ dishes, motherfucker. Trying to get me with that sappy shit.” 

_ “That’s _ what I’m doing.” Proko laughs, and curls a hand in K’s hair, leans in. Presses their mouths together. 

He tastes like beets and like maybe he hasn’t brushed his teeth since this morning; Proko can’t get enough. He can never get enough. He  _ will  _ never get enough. 

He does the dishes.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
